As Arsenal’s players celebrated on the pitch after the final whistle at the Emirates Stadium there was a striking addition to the familiar tableau of hand clasps and hugs, Mikel Arteta striding, then half-running through the departing sky blue shirts – and suddenly out there fully in the huddle, punching the air, working the crowd, Mister Sunday Night.
For a while he was followed around by the on-pitch TV camera as though this, here, in the grey slacks was the man of the match. By the end it came as a slight disappointment Arteta didn’t tear off his tight black polo shirt and hurl it into the crowd. Mikel. Can I have your knitwear please?
It isn’t hard to see why. This was one of those afternoons when everything Arteta did, every starting choice, every mid-game reshuffle, seemed to work. From the selection of Jorginho to add a draught of cold water to the midfield, to managing the absence of Bukayo Saka, to the obvious hands‑in‑the‑cake‑mix moment of Arsenal’s late winning goal, the only one of the game.
This was a goal made and scored at the end of a move involving all four of Arteta’s second-half substitutes, something that has perhaps never happened before in any football match.
First Thomas Partey launched one of the more direct passes of an oblique afternoon, a dipping diagonal from right to left. Takehiro Tomiyasu had come on shortly after Jérémy Doku appeared for City, with a clear brief to staunch the pain down that side. Doku had proceeded to switch flanks. Just before the goal Arteta was out there almost on the pitch jabbering advice in Tomiyasu’s ear. Perhaps he was telling him to respond by making an entirely unexpected blindside inverted attacking run. Either way, this is where Tomiyasu appeared as the ball dropped, nodding the ball back to Kai Havertz, the third sub.
Havertz nudged it calmly back into the path of Gabriel Martinelli. There was a nice moment as Tomiyasu sprinted left, either cleverly opening the space or frantically trying to get out of the way. Martinelli’s shot hit Nathan Aké as he flinched backwards and deflected into the net, to a vast barrelling wave of noise around the ground.
It was a lovely moment for Arteta’s secondary signing of the summer window. Havertz was on the pitch for only 14 minutes but had perhaps his most composed game for Arsenal so far. This is a footballer who will always carry with him the air of a slightly limp and disappointed Jane Austen minor character, but on his better days does so with an air of upright authority.
Otherwise it was Arteta’s chief addition since the last time these two teams met who quietly but insistently nudged this game Arsenal’s way: the £100m midfielder who looked like a gamble early in the summer, before all the midfielders become £100m midfielders.
Declan Rice was drenched with praise for his role in the defeat of Manchester United here. But this was better. It isn’t often an opposing midfielder ends up the most impressive presence on the pitch against a Pep Guardiola team but Rice was excellent, growing into the space left by Rodri’s absence, passing crisply, dishing up more tackles, interceptions and blocks than anyone else on the pitch, and having the drive and the courage to carry the ball from deep positions.
In this he was helped by the more cautious selection alongside him. Jorginho is a fine controlling midfielder, but also in many ways a kind of footballing Xanax, a soft, safe, fuzzy-edged place to rest the ball, a zone of nothing much. The partnership worked well in a game of such high stakes, a game Arteta decided not to lose before making any real attempts to try to win it.
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The Emirates Stadium was still steeped in draining high‑autumn heat at kick-off, a low sun creeping down below the lip of the stand. City should have scored after four minutes, but Rice was there to head the ball off the line. Otherwise the opening exchanges were cautious, mannered stuff. This was cold-brew football, keep-ball in uncontested patches, the kind of football that happens in between the football.
City were disappointing. Erling Haaland was largely anonymous, which is normal, but largely anonymous without scoring, which is just largely anonymous. Guardiola has softened his touchline look from the austere all black. Here he was in all dark grey with large black boots, like a Royal Air Force mechanic. He looked pensive on the touchline. This is a regeared City team. They will take time to settle.
Otherwise this was, for the first time between these two, Arteta’s game. Those changes altered the tempo and texture just enough to force an opening, plus a little luck at the right moment.
There has been a temptation to see a kind of mental block in Arsenal’s failure to beat City in the league before now, but this is to lose any real sense of scale. They finished second last season behind one of the great teams of the modern age. City looked unusually vague here en route to their third defeat in four games. But this still felt like a step forward; and a notable high for both Arteta and Rice.
